Today is the birthday of a very good friend of mine. She’s half Euro (a Scandi-French mix), half-native (Mohawk and Nez Pierce). Thus her name is a Scandi version of Kateri, after Kateri Tekawitha, the Iroquois saint.

So today I’d like to highlight a song that belongs to North America– and, to be specific, Canada, and Huron people. I’ve loved this carol for many years– it’s such a haunting tune.

It was written by Jesuit missionary to the Huron, Jean de Brebeuf, in 1643, using a French Melody and writing the lyrics in the Huron/Wedat language. Due to this, the carol speaks of a child wrapped in rabbit skin, three chieftains instead of kings, hunters instead of shepherds, a tree-bark shelter instead of a stable and manger. Because the Huron people of the time didn’t have the concepts for shepherds, stables, mangers, kings. . . Fr. Jean used the closest equivalents the people had.

Jesuits were quite fond of this method– find the ideas and concepts already in the culture, and then use those concepts to speak about Jesus. Many missionaries across Christendom have found great success with this method. Sadly, it often runs afoul of others who fear that the faith gets diluted with heretical and pagan ideas– something that can be an issue but is, IMHO, less of an problem than people fear. For instance, the Jesuits following St. Francis Xavier had been making great strides in Japan– until Rome ordered them to stop using Japanese culture in their lessons, and to make their teachings clean of “pagan influence”. And now, of course, Japan is one of the least religious places on the planet.

This happens because (I theorize) people forget that while Christians certainly understand their faith to be a fulfillment of the promises of Judaism, it is also a fulfillment of many of the non-Jewish beliefs that preceded Christ. St. Augustine notes the pre-figuring of the Trinity found in the Egyptian religion, and the Druids of the British Isles are recorded as having welcomed Christianity as a fulfillment of their own beliefs. Similar stories are found across the world when missionaries had the sense to first investigate the people they wish to bring the Gospel to– the book Eternity in Their Hearts documents a lot of these stories.

Anyway, to the music. I’ve got a few versions to share. First up, my favorite version– in Huron, French and English:

This is the one you usually hear from choirs, the standard 1926 translation by Jessee Edgar Middleton (you’ll need to turn it up a bit):

This last one I chose because it’s a different translation. While most of you know I’m not really into that whole PC thing, I do appreciate more accurate translations, as they give better insights into the culture from which they come. [In his notes, Michael “Medicine Crow” Lott, mentions that after recording this, he realized that “angels” should have been translated as “Sky People”, and that he sings it that way now.]